Critic calls Seattle pilot of MTV’s ‘The Phone’ ‘perfectly awful’

In case you missed Tuesday night’s premiere of “The Phone,” the new MTV reality show that set its first episode in Seattle, it’s available online.

But according to some reviews, you might want to pass.

“To call ‘The Phone’ merely imperfect would be the gentlest possible charge that anyone could ever levy,” wrote Tom Shales of The Washington Post. “Although, it is perfect in certain sorts of ways — you know: perfectly awful, perfectly horrid, perfectly insane, and so on.”

In the premiere episode, which starts at Alki and the Seattle Public Library and eventually moves to the top of the Space Needle, four twentysomethings are set on a mission via cell phone to stop a bomber who’s attacking the city while explosions, challenges and (fake) dangers abound.

“It commits a lesser — but on jumpy, ADD-addled MTV unforgivable — sin: at an hour, it’s too long to sustain interest. While I wanted to know if the two finalists would achieve their goal and win the money (and prevent Seattle from being fake-blown-up), the only thing that kept me going toward the end were the show’s commercials.”